Haystack to launch new residency program with help from Quimby

Artist Bryant Holsenback (right), of Durham, N.C., gives feedback to Deer Isle-Stonington sophomore Autumn Robbins, 14, and other students as they helped assemble a mandala made up of thousands of bottle caps, can lids and other items at the Haystack Mountain School of Carfts' Center for Community Programs in Deer Isle in November 2009. Buy Photo

DEER ISLE, Maine — Thanks to a $20,000 grant from the Quimby Family Foundation, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts is set to launch a three-year residency program at its Island campus in Deer Isle.

The new “Open Studio Residency” program will open Haystack’s many studios to about 40 participants for two weeks in June over the next three years, said Development Director Ginger Aldrich.

The Quimby Foundation was founded in 2004 by Roxanne Quimby after she sold the multimillion-dollar Burt’s Bees company. Haystack is mum on the identity of another major foundation, which gave an anonymous $300,000 gift to fund the new residency and Haystack’s usual conferences for the next three years.

Participants will have free reign to pursue their own creative endeavors and to collaborate with others, and will pay nothing for the privilege. The residency includes lodging, meals, 24/7 studio access and technical support and would otherwise cost about $2,000 per resident, Aldrich said.

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Aldrich said she hoped participants would work together and form long-term connections that outlast the residency.

“We’re supporting creativity,” she said. “If they collaborate in the longer term, they’ll have met here. We’ve helped make that happen.”

Open Studio Residency will sponsor invitees as well as participants who apply for the program. That separates it from Haystack’s normal residency program, which is open only to former faculty. Participants from backgrounds as diverse as scientists, engineers, designers and architects are encouraged to apply, Aldrich said.

Residents will have full-time access to several fully equipped studios, including the school’s new Digital Fabrication Lab, its wood shop, studios for clay, fiber, metal and graphic arts, and the school’s “hot shop” for blacksmithing and glass blowing.